How much is this championship worth? The reality and future behind the U15 national championship
Reporter Chen Yong reported that on September 8, China's U15 national training team won the championship against Japan U15 and South Korea U15 in the first East Asian Football Federation U15 Championship, which is of great significance to the reality of Chinese football. But for the future of Chinese football, how to keep these players competitive after the age of 15 is still a big problem, especially in the context of the Olympic team's difficult victory over India, the fate of qualifying is uncertain, and the national team is forced to draw at home by Malaysia.
Although it is not an official international competition, and the fact that China, Japan and South Korea are not really national junior teams, and the Chinese U15 national training team is closer to the top players in this age group in terms of selection, victory still has multiple values.
The significance of motivation is still there, although the Olympic team's difficult 2-1 victory over India a day later is not satisfactory, and although the national team's 1-1 draw with Malaysia is still sluggish, the East Asian Cup title is finally a glimmer of light. In fact, the 2004 national junior team, the 2006 national junior and the 2003 national youth returned to the Asian Cup main group to qualify, all showing the vitality of Chinese young players and the dawn of Chinese football.
This will at least make the Chinese football circle, especially the decision-making level, pay more attention to the development of youth football:
First, the campus football that was fully rolled out 8 years ago has shown certain effects, and it is inevitable to continue to expand the influence and coverage of campus football, continue to improve the quality of campus football events and improve the coaching level of campus football.
Second, the Chinese youth football leagues created last year, including the Chinese Football Association Youth Football Championship created this year, and the ever-existing Football League Cup, have also shown their own value. In particular, the Chinese U15 national training team is actually composed of two teams that reached the final of the U15 group of the Chinese Youth Championship, and 17 of the 20 players are from the two teams in the final.
Third, from the level of youth training institutions, the Luneng youth training that has always been adhered to, and the Evergrande youth training that has been cultivated for 10 years and encountered difficulties but has not given up, the effect shown is gratifying. Further expanding the number of youth training institutions, complementing campus football and various events, and solving the problem of few teams and insufficient quality in local competitions, is also an inevitable and necessary choice.
Fourth, as far as the preparation of the national brand is concerned, the long-term training method of the national Olympic team has also lost to the short-term formation of the U15 training team, especially the long-term training of the national Olympic team seems to have technical and tactical gains, but after the conflict with the player's psychological level, the actual effect is far lower than the expected effect, which is also an important reason why the national Olympic team does not play and does not train. Although the original intention of the long-term training of the National Olympic Games has its historical background, not training for the sake of training, the final effect is still profound.
Of course, there are other meanings. But all this does not mean how promising Chinese football is, or that these children will definitely help Chinese football rise. The key is that the efforts of these children and their achievements have a wide range of reference for the entire system construction and specific strategies of Chinese football, and more importantly, it proves that the current decision of Chinese football to focus on youth football is correct, and it must strengthen such goals and beliefs.
When the fans cheered for the Chinese U15 national training team, there were also many professionals who gave calm thinking, and a problem that must be recognized is that the gap between Chinese football and football power is: the younger the age, the smaller the gap, the bigger the younger, the bigger the gap. Including the match between the Chinese U15 training team and the Japanese U15 team, the Chinese team showed advantages in speed and strength, supplemented by a fighting attitude and reasonable tactics, making up for the huge gap in tactical awareness and technical ability with the Japanese team, but the key to the problem is that speed and strength can be naturally compensated, and technical and reading skills are more difficult to improve after this age group.
More importantly, orange born in Huainan is orange, born in Huaibei is orange, in the future, with the huge gap in the quality of Chinese and Japanese players' games, this individual gap will become larger and larger, and the overall gap is even greater than that of individuals. Very simple truth, the Japanese football competition system is sound and perfect, the quality is spiraling, the Japanese players are taking a climbing road, and the Chinese youth tournament includes the professional league, even if the degree of confrontation has increased, but the tactical system has been in a low state for a long time, and the Chinese players are taking a wandering road. The result was exactly like yesterday: on the same day, China drew 1-1 with Malaysia and Japan beat Germany 4-1.
As far as the future is concerned, this group of children in the 2008 age group, including the future children of 2009, 2010, 2011 and other age groups, playing high-quality matches is key, specifically at both the national and international levels.
Domestic level: First, to further improve the quality of the Chinese Youth Championship, especially the overall improvement of the quality of the local qualifiers of the Youth Championship, in fact, the best U15 age players may not participate in the local qualifiers in the future, but the pyramid needs to be built layer by layer; In the context of the high-quality finals of the Chinese Youth Championship is only one month, it is very important to comprehensively develop special events such as key city group competitions, member association group competitions and professional club group (referred to as U series) competitions, especially high-quality U series competitions are indispensable and need to be further improved; Second, further support "strong matchup" events, such as the Football School League Cup, you know, this batch of children who won the championship began to play step by step from the Football School League Cup at the age of 10, of course, including various domestic invitational tournaments.
At the international competition level, there are two ways: going out and inviting in. In terms of going out, the Chinese Football Association should start to form an elite selection team from the age of 13, take advantage of the right opportunity to go out to play, if you can reach cooperation with relevant events held abroad all year round, it is naturally the best, so that it is more convenient to coordinate the calendar, the specific team is best with two or three teams, no less than twice a year, 10 to 15 days each time is the best. Please come in and promote the U15 East Asian Cup to be held every year, corresponding to the U17 Asian Cup and the U17 World Cup once a year, if possible, the U13 and U14 are also held once a year; To fully promote the holding of Weifang Cup and Panda Cup, theoretically, 15, 17 and 19 years old, each age group in China should have 3 to 5 state-supported, local or club-led international invitational tournaments.
The pre-existing measures are naturally to pay more attention to campus football, and the mayor's cup of each city should be developed into a home-and-away league system, if necessary, campus football should be a mid-week weekly format throughout the year (September to May of the following year), and the weekend weekly format should be reserved for youth training events or local qualifiers for the youth competition. The auxiliary measures are to do their best to improve the level of coaches, including giving coaches corresponding positions in the campus football system, which Li Zhuangfei, assistant coach of China's U15 national training team and former captain of the national junior team who last entered the World Junior Championships, specifically emphasized this point. Of course, restoring the health of professional leagues, including comprehensively expanding the scale of professional leagues and amateur leagues in the future, increasing the demand for football talents (players, coaches, referees, management, security and other football professionals), and then expanding football supply (solving the bottleneck of campus football development), is also an inevitable way, and the relevant content has been interpreted in detail in this newspaper before.